VSC/Steering Angle Sensor/Steering - Show me my ignorance.

I swapped the lower intermediate steering shaft on my 09 TRDOR and for various reasons, the wheel is a couple degrees clockwise from where it should be. There's a long story of how it ended up this way. The alignment is pretty fresh and I had good steering (with a little detectable slop and sticking from the inter. steer. u-joint) before the swap.

The steering feels great other than the couple degrees off. I'm almost positive that it's at least one tooth off, but given how bad the old u-joint was, I think it's totally possible some of the misalignment is coming from that, too.

If I go ahead and get a full alignment done, and do a VSC recalibrate, does this also zero out the steering wheel position? In other words, is steering wheel position (as far as the truck cares about it, which is somewhere in the ABS logic I presume) a function in the VSC computer that can zero to the SAS position value arbitrarily?

I realize this is a little esoteric, but I'm trying to get a good understanding of the machine here.

Thanks.

 

I'm assuming it would set the zero point to wherever the steering wheel is positioned when the calibration procedure is performed based on the service info.
If you have an alignment done the alignment shop should center the steering wheel for you, after the alignment is complete the zero point calibration needs to be done.

 

Thanks for the info. I know that the VSC reset/recal takes care of the yaw and decel sensor calibration, but I'm specifically curious about the steering angle sensor and the steering wheel position value.

I wish I had a reader here that could check those values, it would be a simple matter to test.

 

The steering angle sensor is checked/zeroed each time you start the truck and drive a bit. It will only throw a code if the new value is suspiciously different from the previous value. The zero point reset just zeroes the yaw rate and acceleration sensor assembly. You don't have any real problem other than a crooked steering wheel.

Note: I'm certain this is all true for 3rd gen and far as I remember it's also true for 2nd gen.

 

Ok, showing my ignorance. I don’t really know what the angle sensor is for. (2nd gen 09) 150k miles. Had new Bilstein adjustable fronts installed. Shop was surprised that after alignment the sensor data showed -135 deg. They scratched heads and reset to 0.
Have I been driving for 150k with error angle on sensor? What does that impact? Who do I get edukatun on this?

 

The steering angle sensor is primarily used for the Vehicle Stability Control (VSC) system along with the Yaw, Roll, and Wheel Speed sensors it determines whether or not the vehicle is travelling in the direction the driver intends (steering angle), if it determines it isn't it uses the ABS pump to apply individual brakes and/or reduces engine power to correct it.
If it determines any of the sensor signals is outside a plausible range it will flag a fault code and disable the system.

 

If the sensor was off by 135 deg with no obvious code thrown, how might the truck misbehave?

 

If steering angle was off slightly I would think the VSC would activate when it shouldn't, being off that much I would expect it to throw a fault code and disable the system. I've also seen scan tools report bad data for sensors so that's always a possibility.

 

I'd be worried about a couple items:

1. possibly breaking the clockspring. It was designed to only rotate so far. I doubt this would happen in your case, but possible.

2. The steering rack and pinion. Most manufacturers set them to ride a certain way near center. Since your steering wheel is crooked, there is a good chance you are not center at the rack now.

The proper fix would be to re-do the job. Ensure the rack and steering wheel are centered before assembly.